Morung Express
Dimapur | July 3
Ever since the ONGC planted a drill in Nagaland, it has always been faced with strong “differences” from the people, particularly. Now it is ONGC’s oil-exploration partner Canaro Resources Ltd. that has rubbed landowners of Champang the wrong way this time. More than score visibly-angered landowners today shot off a letter to the media highlighting what was resented as the audacious intrusion of the oil-company and interference in the affairs of the local populace recently.
According to a release appended by about twenty-one landowners from oil-rich Champang, Canaro Resources along with about 60 “outsiders” barged into the office of the Champang Village Council in the early hours of Saturday, June 30. The Canaro Resources people then proceeded to threaten the council’s chairman and forced from him a letter “in favor of Canoro.” A meeting was also held on June 30, which the landowners has declared null and void.
The landowners have questioned the authority of Les Kondratoff (president and CEO) calling a meeting of the village council through the chairman. Related points that landowners highlighted include the pastor of Champang Baptist Church of ‘D’ Khel’s pastor “accept or issue” a letter to the council chairman by Canaro Resources and circulating it among the denizens of Champang village. Mentioning that the so-called meeting started at 7am when the actual schedule was set at 11am, the landowners also questioned the authority of Canoro appointing a “seasonal chairman,” one Nchumbemo Kithan. The company was also challenged if it can produce any letter from the council or its chairman authorizing any individual for a meeting on June 9.
“The matter is serious and amounts to intervention of foreign elements to disturb the life of the people and to create (division) amongst the villagers; this has to be dealt at a high-level” the landowners stated. They also held opinion that Canaro Resources and its men should be banned with immediate effect ‘as it amounts to matter of national security.”
Canoro was further challenged for its ‘fixing’ the EAC premises, a government property, as a meeting venue for a meting on the 30th. Further a service personnel one Nathanial Kikon and a retired forest official, one Nrio Jami chased away the actual landowners from the June 30th meeting. The meeting, which was forced, therefore had no representation from the actual landowners, it was asserted. The chairman of the council, Longshithung Kithan was threatened with removal from office if he did not append his signature. In this regard the landowners declared that the letter signed by the chairman under duress from the company, is illegal and null and void.
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